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Arctic Melt, by Andy Armstrong, NOAA

Caution

All technical information and scientific data released by US Government agencies (e.g., NASA, EPA…) are subject to sudden variation because of political expediency.
This caution also extends to the fidelity of the information provided by UN organizations (e.g., FAO, WHO…).

WARNING!

Point of No Return:
Unless global energy consumption is reduced immediately to below 60EJ, mechanisms that are destroying ecosystems including ozone holes, global heating, extreme climate events... reach the point of no return, overwhelm the life support systems, render most cities uninhabitable by 2015 or earlier.

Posts Tagged ‘New Zealand’

Politics of Kidney Stone

Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, a British Politician and a former European Union (EU) Trade Commissioner, was rushed to hospital with kidney complaints and subsequently diagnosed with having kidney stones, said the British media.

Nothing to it: White, clean and full of protein (!) Peter Mandelson Drinking the local milk during a televised press conference in China.

In an otherwise carefully calculated political stunt, Lord Mandelson in his former role as an EU Trade Commissioner gulped a glass of Chinese milk on television during a press conference on September 26, a move which prompted the establishment to appoint him as Britain’s Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to appease Beijing.

Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier was overwhelmed by Mandelson’s selfless act of health sacrifice and said: “He committed this act because he not only sees the present, but also the future.”

Alas, it was a short future indeed for Lord Mandelson since it lasted only 9 days before he was rushed to the hospital.

Lord Mandelson’s spokesman said: ‘He won’t want to comment.’

At least 56,000 Chinese babies needed treatment for kidney stones and 4 died [we may never know the exact number of the dead, a state secret] when Chinese companies added melamine, an industrial chemical, to make watered-down milk appear nutritious and used the tainted milk to manufacture infant formula.

An Open Letter To NZ PM Helen Clark:

Tell the Truth to the Parents of the Dead and Sick Chinese Babies, they are Humans, Too!

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark claims her government learned of the contamination problem on September 5. She slept over it for three days and then decided to inform Beijing after local Chinese officials refused to act.

She deputized New Zealand ambassador to China Tony Brown to tell the Chinese government.

“We were the whistle-blowers and they [the Chinese government] leapt in and ensured there was action on the ground,” Clark said. “We cannot have it on our conscience.”

Fonterra had “been trying for weeks to get official recall and the local authorities in China would not do it”, Clark told TVNZ.

“I think the first inclination was to try and put a towel over it and deal with it without an official recall,” she said.

What a load of old codswallop!

They are Humans, too, Ms Clark, Despite their “Squint Eyes” and Your Official Briefing

Parents of the babies with kidney stones talk to reporters at a hospital in Lanzhou, capital of northwest China's Gansu Province, Sept. 11, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)

Now, Tell the Truth!

Do you confirm or deny, preferably under oath, that your senior SIS agent in China, “Y,” told you about the tainted Sanlu powdered milk incident before September 5, 2008?

Google Censorship is a Flagrant Violation of Our Freedom of Speech!

Freedom of speech is being able to speak freely without censorship. The United States Constitution protects opinions under inalienable 1st Amendment free speech rights.

The right to freedom of speech is also guaranteed under international law through numerous human-rights instruments, notably under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

How much longer is Google allowed to continue its censorship in violation of the United States Constitution and the international law?

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao represent the worst of a country mired in corruption and sleaze. The criminal gang in the Chinese Politburo have once again proven that the Chinese people may not count on them for their safety and protection.

What Others Say About the Corrupt Politburo Gang in China?

Why was the quake nurse reduced to tears and had to beg the soldiers to rescue children?

If rescuing the children wasn’t their priority, and clearly it wasn’t, what were the soldiers ordered to do?

What were the orders soldiers own general gave them?

When did the authorities decide they couldn’t cope with too many quake survivors?

“Although the time for the best chance of rescue, the first 72 hours after an earthquake, has passed [exactly as planned by CPC], saving lives remains the top priority of our work [believe what I say, not what I do, you ‘ignorant peasants’],” the [doublespeaking] Chinese president, Hu Jintao, told the survivors. (Source)

The Riddle of the Chinese Paratroopers

1. There are an estimated 30,000 people burried in the area. How could 100 paratroopers help rescue such large number of victims?

2. The paratroopers landed two days after the mainshock had struck. By then the survival chances of the victims who had been buried alive had already been reduced by about 80 percent.

3. Anyone rescued from the rubble would need medical attention, freshwater, food, blankets, tents … to survive. Did the paratroopers carry all of the vital supplies in their rucksacks?

Therefore, the question remains: Are the paratroopers sent to rescue the “survivors,” or to “finish off the job,” i.e., bury everyone, alive or dead, to prevent potential outbreaks of plague and other pandemics? [The Beijing Olympics are just around the corner!]

About 6,900 classrooms were destroyed – weaker than other buildings in withstanding the shock. It has also said that as many as 390 dams could be at risk.

China is earthquake prone, Sichuan in particular experiencing a similar scale earthquake in 1933. China’s geologists had warned there was a one-in-10 chance of a recurrence within 50 years and buildings and dams should have been built to strict regulatory standards. They weren’t, especially those built most recently. This is not just corner cutting in the quest for fast growth, or the kind of loose practice that comes to light after disasters everywhere. It is the consequence of systemic non-enforcement of regulations in return for bribes – and everyone in China knows it.

Professor Hu Angang, an economist at Tsinghua university, estimates that one yuan in six is, in effect, corrupt. Even army officers buy their rank.

One mother told the Guardian: ‘Chinese officials are too corrupt and bad … They have money for prostitutes and second wives but they don’t have money for our children.’ It is the same story when it comes to food safety, drug standards or environmental regulations, of which only 10 per cent are enforced. Corruption is ubiquitous, which is why so many buildings were deathtraps. Another woman drew attention to the government and party buildings that remained standing, plainly built to the right specifications.

Water shortages have become “extremely serious” in Sichuan province, according to Chinese Housing Minister Jiang Weixin. There is no running water in 20 counties and cities in the disaster area, he said.

A doctor, who had worked for two days without a break in the ruins of school buildings that entombed 900 students, lashed out at those responsible for sub-standard buildings that failed to protect victims of the earthquake.

“It’s nothing but corruption – they must have used sub-standard cement and steel,” said Dr Tian, who was reluctant to give his other name.

Three days after the quake struck, troops and fire engines queued idly along the roadsides waiting for orders.

“I saw a doctor walking along the lines of bloody bodies, checking pulses and looking at wounds. If he shook his head the nurses were instructed not to take the person to the operating theatre but move them to another room to die. It was like a scene from a war film,” she said.

Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World

Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya. [“Norwegian cod costs a manufacturer $1.36 a pound to process in Europe, but only 23 cents a pound in Asia.” And the hell with internalizing the environmental costs. Oh, and it’s nice to know there is still cod left off Norway!]

In the United States, FreshDirect proclaims kiwi season has expanded to “All year!” now that Italy has become the world’s leading supplier of New Zealand’s national fruit, taking over in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

And the penetration of mega-markets in nations from China to Mexico with supply and distribution chains that gird the globe — like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco — has accelerated the trend.

But the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution — especially carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas — from transporting the food. [Include processing, packaging and refrigeration!]

Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures.

“We’re shifting goods around the world in a way that looks really bizarre,” said Paul Watkiss, an Oxford University economist who wrote a recent European Union report on food imports.

He noted that Britain, for example, imports — and exports — 15,000 tons of waffles a year, and similarly exchanges 20 tons of bottled water with Australia. More important, Mr. Watkiss said, “we are not paying the environmental cost of all that travel.”

[Cheap oil has distorted the notion of creating ‘economic gains’ to such great extents that governments subsidize the industry to export and import the same product, often in similar quantities, within the same fiscal period. Country A exports Q tons of product P to country B, while it imports Q tons of the same product P from country B at the same time, with a net zero gain in commodity exchange for either country. However, the exchange produces about 9Q tons of CO2e pollution, nine times the weight of the commodity that was flown in either direction, for every 1,000 miles that the consignment is airborne. See The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 1)]

The European Union, the world’s leading food importer, has increased imports 20 percent in the last five years. The value of fresh fruit and vegetables imported by the United States, in second place, nearly doubled from 2000 to 2006.

Under a little-known international treaty called the Convention on International Civil Aviation, signed in Chicago in 1944 to help the fledgling airline industry, fuel for international travel and transport of goods, including food, is exempt from taxes, unlike trucks, cars and buses. There is also no tax on fuel used by ocean freighters.

Proponents say ending these breaks could help ensure that producers and consumers pay the environmental cost of increasingly well-traveled food.
[Our weekly shopping basket includes items that would have flown more air miles than the average family fly in their lifetime! A 1kg (2.2lb) bag of New Zealand kiwifruit (in any of its cadmium, arsenic, lead, mercury… or organochlorine varieties) produces about 142kg (313lb) of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent gases) pollution flying to the US, or 188.7kg (416lb) of CO2e to Europe. See The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 1)]

And with far cheaper labor costs in African nations, Morocco and Egypt have displaced Spain in just a few seasons as important suppliers of tomatoes and salad greens to central Europe.

Some studies have calculated that as little as 3 percent of emissions from the food sector are caused by transportation. But Mr. Watkiss, the Oxford economist, said the percentage was growing rapidly. Moreover, imported foods generate more emissions than generally acknowledged because they require layers of packaging and, in the case of perishable food, refrigeration.

Britain, with its short growing season and powerful supermarket chains, imports 95 percent of its fruit and more than half of its vegetables. Food accounts for 25 percent of truck shipments in Britain, according to the British environmental agency, DEFRA.

Mr. Datson of Tesco acknowledged that there were environmental consequences to the increased distances food travels, but he said his company was merely responding to consumer appetites. “The offer and range has been growing because our customers want things like snap peas year round,” Mr. Datson said. “We don’t see our job as consumer choice editing.” [Tell that to melting ice!]

Global supermarket chains like Tesco and Carrefour, spreading throughout Eastern Europe and Asia, cater to a market for convenience foods, like washed lettuce and cut vegetables. They also help expand the reach of global brands.

Pringles potato chips, for example, are now sold in more than 180 countries, though they are manufactured in only a handful of places, said Kay Puryear, a spokeswoman for Procter & Gamble, which makes Pringles.

Proponents of taxing transportation fuel say it would end such distortions by changing the economic calculus.

“Food is traveling because transport has become so cheap in a world of globalization,” said Frederic Hague, head of Norway’s environmental group Bellona. “If it was just a matter of processing fish cheaper in China, I’d be happy with it traveling there. The problem is pollution.”

Switzerland, which does not belong to the E.U., already taxes trucks that cross its borders.
Some studies have shown that shipping fresh apples, onions and lamb from New Zealand might produce lower emissions than producing the goods in Europe … [Don’t the statistics related to shipment of toxic food from New Zealand have a habit of defying physical laws and conventional maths?]

But those studies were done in New Zealand, and the food travel debate is inevitably intertwined with economic interests. [Right!]

Last month, Tony Burke, the Australian minister for agriculture, fisheries and forestry, said that carbon footprinting and labeling food miles — the distance food has traveled — was “nothing more than protectionism.” [O RLY?]

Box Fresh Organics, a popular British brand, advertises that 85 percent of its vegetables come from the British Midlands. But in winter, in its standard basket, only the potatoes and carrots are from Britain. The grapes are South African, the fennel is from Spain and the squash is Italian.
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